The present disclosure relates to an apparatus for finding, identifying, sorting, arranging, and stacking or otherwise managing utensils, such as forks and spoons. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to a utensil sorting device that can continually receive unsorted utensils while simultaneously sorting one more of the utensils, then identify and orient the utensil, followed by placing the utensil in a designated area. The apparatus can also be used for arranging and stacking utensils for secondary operations such as wrapping utensils in a napkin.
In industries such as restaurants, hotels, casinos, banquet halls, caters, hospitals, etc., a business may serve several hundred to several thousand guests per day. Each of these guests may use three or more utensils during their meal. Moreover, some businesses may serve 3 meals per day. This creates a need for the aforementioned businesses to clean thousands of utensils every day; the cleaning process involves soaking, sorting, and usually two washes. Furthermore, in some business, the utensils are wrapped in a napkin after they are cleaned, creating even more work that needs to be completed.
Typically these processes are done using unskilled labor. However, both processes are time consuming and often are required to be completed at times when the highest numbers of customers are at the facility. This can create a timing issue that forces a business to employ additional staff at the peak times, as well as keep staff at the facility for a longer time before or after a shift. Furthermore, due to the repetitive nature of the tasks, the employees can be at risk of developing repetitive stress injuries.
It is desirable to provide systems, apparatuses, devices, and methods that can complete as much as possible of the cleaning, sorting and wrapping processes with minimal human involvement. Furthermore, the device should be simple enough for an unskilled employee to operate, fast enough to sort, clean, and organize at the same rate a person can, as quiet as possible, and as compact as possible to minimize the amount of space required for the device at the business since space is typically limited.
Several devices have been developed for sorting utensils; most of these involve sizing apertures in the devices to allow only certain size items to pass through. Other systems may also employ a conveyor and/or vibration element to aid in separating the pieces from one another. These devices are limited in their ability because they require utensils to fit into a particularly sized aperture. Also, different utensils can have the same length, thus making the method of differentiating the utensils inadequate.
Some of the disadvantages to these systems include size, noise level, amount of human involvement, ability to integrate with existing equipment, and limitations that require utensils to be a specific size, as well as to have different lengths for each. Additionally, a number of the devices do not orient the utensils, which can be a time consuming, but necessary step in the utensil cleaning process. Moreover, several of the devices are not able to sort more than a single utensil at a time. Furthermore, not all of the devices are designed to fit in with existing standard restaurant equipment, such as tables, bus bin carts, etc.
Next, secondary operations, such as wrapping utensils in a napkin, require a user to orient the utensils before feeding them into a machine. Some systems require the user to put the utensils in a bin, while others have specially designed trays that the utensils can be washed in. Both of these systems require some level of human involvement to arrange the utensils.
For these reasons, it would be advantageous to create systems, apparatuses, and devices that are compact, reliable, sanitary, fast, and requires minimal human interaction to sort, arrange, or otherwise manage utensils. Such systems, apparatuses, devices, and methods would be able to sort, orient, soak, and set up the utensils for secondary operations such as utensil wrapping.